Zero-Fee Blockchains Encourage Transaction Spamming

[Abiky]

Blockchains such as EOS, IOTA, and even NANO have zero-fees for transactions. While this is good for the crypto economy, I'm afraid that it does more harm to the cryptocurrency's blockchain network than any good. When a cryptocurrency provides zero fees, it promotes transaction spamming, as anyone could send/receive coins for free. The spammer would take advantage of this until it floods the network with lots of transactions making the cryptocurrency inoperative (or at least extremely slow in performance).

This could be like a DDoS attack, as the attacker sends many requests to the server until it becomes inoperable. That's why, I believe that other blockchains which charge a network fee, are much secure since they would essentially punish the spammer as he/she makes several transactions at large.

Nonetheless, do zero-fee blockchains really encourage transaction spamming? Or am I missing something?

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[Abiky]

Bump

[siddartha1492]

Well, not necessarily. I think the main 2 chains with zero fees are Steem and EOS. Steem earlier allowed for unlimited transaction even if your account had negligible Steem staked. But now the amount of actions you can take on the blockchain are directly proportional to the Steem staked. So you would really need a lot of Steem staked in your account for say a transaction DDOS attack. And that's quiet risky. I mean why would you buy a large amount of a token just to bring down its own chain. It would be like burning your money. Of course rival chains may find it useful, but then crypto users are so vigilant these days that stunts like these often backfire.

Same for EOS. And EOS takes a step further by actually banning accounts with ill intents. But yes, thing with these types of chain are that they are very centralized which itself is a negative point.

[covfefe_]

Taking a negligible fee would never be a bad option. Like the smallest possible decimal too would prevent from spammers to make a millions of transactions just to bloat the network. Finding and punishing malintent would never be flawless.

[Herbert2020]

this is what i have also always wondered. i still don't know what the plan is for coins such as IOTA for example to prevent spam attacks. and i don't think i am going to get the answer to that anytime soon since these coins are never used so there is no incentive for anyone to actually spam attack them so that we can see what is going to happen.

Same for EOS. And EOS takes a step further by actually banning accounts with ill intents. But yes, thing with these types of chain are that they are very centralized which itself is a negative point.

in a decentralized network that you can not prevent people from creating as many key pairs ("accounts") as they like, there is no way to "ban" an attacker.

[siddartha1492]

Same for EOS. And EOS takes a step further by actually banning accounts with ill intents. But yes, thing with these types of chain are that they are very centralized which itself is a negative point.

Well seems like you are not much aware of EOS then. The witnesses have combined power of banning accounts, reversing transactions and locking funds. So yes, if someone keeps spamming the network, then they can lose their staked amount. And as you might know, in order to spam EOS chain, you'd need a large amount of EOS staked.

in a decentralized network that you can not prevent people from creating as many key pairs ("accounts") as they like, there is no way to "ban" an attacker.

[Abiky]

Well, not necessarily. I think the main 2 chains with zero fees are Steem and EOS. Steem earlier allowed for unlimited transaction even if your account had negligible Steem staked. But now the amount of actions you can take on the blockchain are directly proportional to the Steem staked. So you would really need a lot of Steem staked in your account for say a transaction DDOS attack. And that's quiet risky. I mean why would you buy a large amount of a token just to bring down its own chain. It would be like burning your money. Of course rival chains may find it useful, but then crypto users are so vigilant these days that stunts like these often backfire.

Same for EOS. And EOS takes a step further by actually banning accounts with ill intents. But yes, thing with these types of chain are that they are very centralized which itself is a negative point.

That makes sense. Otherwise, if negative activity on a blockchain wouldn't be punished, then the attacker could get away with disrupting the entire network. At least, EOS has Block Producers which have the power to freeze accounts (although heavily centralized). While Steem also has a mechanism to help protect against transaction spamming (as you've said earlier), it's up to debate whenever DAG cryptocurrencies like IOTA or NANO would do the same. The security of such cryptocurrencies isn’t proven unlike PoW, PoS and DPoS. Which means that if zero-fee transactions on a DAG don't get punished, cryptocurrencies using such model will be doomed to failure.

After all, there's a reason why Satoshi implemented a network fee within Bitcoin. If he/she wanted Bitcoin to be fee-less, then he/she would've done so within the early days of launch. However, Satoshi had a purpose for Bitcoin's fees, which makes it highly expensive to attack the network nowadays with a flood of transactions.

Nonetheless, if zero-fee blockchains become highly secure and viral, they could be the future of crypto as we know it. Just my thoughts

[Herbert2020]

in a decentralized network that you can not prevent people from creating as many key pairs ("accounts") as they like, there is no way to "ban" an attacker.

Well seems like you are not much aware of EOS then. The witnesses have combined power of banning accounts, reversing transactions and locking funds. So yes, if someone keeps spamming the network, then they can lose their staked amount. And as you might know, in order to spam EOS chain, you'd need a large amount of EOS staked.

that is true, i am not that familiar with EOS. but in my experience the term "witness nodes" is another term for centralization of nodes where they are the ones deciding everything on the network and can ban anyone that they want. which was my point above too, that you can not have centralization + 0 fee + spam protect at the same time.
not to mention that every spam attacker on bitcoin network had a large amount of money to spare so your last statement about large amount of EOS is moot.